Cleaning compositions nowadays come in a number of product forms, such as granules, liquids and tablets, each form having its advantages and disadvantages.
Recently, tablets have gained renewed interest, mainly because they are easy to handle for the consumer and easy to dose (‘unit dose’) and they have as additional benefit that they allow incompatible ingredients to be incorporated separated from one another, for example in different layers. This can reduce the area of contact of these incompatible materials and thus reduce the occurrence of any reaction between such materials.
However, to make tablets storage stable and to prevent breakage of the tablets during handling, the ingredients need to be compressed together and generally binding agents are needed to ensure the tablets do not break. This can reduce their solubility and dispersibility, which is undesirable for the consumers and also from a performance point of view.
Thus, alternative ways or better ways are required for providing easy to handle, unit dose products whereby different ingredients can be present separate from one another in an easy way (for example to reduce intimate contact and improve stability of incompatible ingredients) which do not dust or break.
The inventors have now found an improved way for providing improved products addressing the above problems, namely by incorporating a product in a pouch in a specific way, such that the above requirements are fulfilled.
Pouches for detergents as such are known in the art to be useful to provide unit dose compositions and to separate ingredients from one another. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,601 describes a packages made with different compartments for different materials. However, this type of structure and also other pouches known in the art have their problems and often requires a complicated manufacturing route and a relatively large amount of sheet material.
The inventors have now found improved pouched particulate compositions which are such that intimate contact with different components thereof is reduced, without the need to compact them to the extent of tablets and without the need of difficult structures, such as multiple separate compartments, to separate different ingredients from one another. In the products of the invention, the different components of the compositions are namely packed tightly in different regions of one and the same compartment or pouch, such that they are substantially immobilised or fixed and thus remain like that during handling and storage. However, because the components are still in powder or granular form and are not stuck together as in tablets, the dissolution or dispersion of the composition comprising these components into water is very fast. Thus, improved storage stability of for example incompatible ingredients like enzymes and bleach is achieved, with a minimum of pouch material and with very good product delivery and performance.
Furthermore, improved processes are provided to form the pouched composition, such that the components in the regions stay fixed or immobilised.